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A library of donated books in a Johannesburg squatter camp has been closed, prompting an angry response from residents:

A library donated to the Joe Slovo squatter camp in Johannesburg was closed last month because a residents\' committee was not informed about its opening. This week supporters of the library threatened legal action against the committee if it did not allow residents access to the facility. . . \"We need the library, especially these children,\" said Japie Mashadi, pointing at dirty children playing between the shacks. . .

This case tested just one provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the DMCA failed.

Judge Robert J. Kelleher dismissed Hendrickson\'s request for damages from eBay, saying among other things that the copyright infringement actually occurred offline. Although it may facilitate the sale of pirated material, \"eBay does not have the right and ability to control such activity,\" a standard required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the judge wrote.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long line of DMCA releated defeats.

\"Nothing says taste and intelligence quite like books. The set of NBC\'s \"Today\" show also includes a goodly portion of books arranged discreetly on a shelf, as if to suggest that Kate and Matt are passionate bibliophiles. In the shadow of books, everyone looks smarter.\"

From the Honolulu Star Bulletin:
\"State librarian Virginia Lowell is slated to get a pay raise from the Board of Education tomorrow, which would boost her annual salary to $108,000 from the current $85,302.\"Full Story

You guessed it, the unlikely guru is a former librarian! In this story from The Nando Times, Geoff Calkins writes:\"You wouldn\'t think she\'d know anything about kicking,\" says James Gaither, the Memphis punter. \"But she knows everything there is to know.\" Meet Carol White, former high school librarian, current kicking guru and possible savior-passing-through at Memphis.\"Full Story

Katie Pesznecker from the Anchorage Daily News has written a follow up to an earlier article about the kids\' book \"It\'s Perfectly Normal\". \"Robie Harris knows there are parents who don\'t want their kids reading about masturbation, homosexuality and orgasms. And that\'s fine with Harris, the author of \"It\'s Perfectly Normal,\" the sexual health book under challenge in Anchorage school libraries.\"Full Story

Judy Nelson writes \"3M Library Systems is having a drawing for a $100
American Express Gift Certificate and all you have to do is submit your quote and picture by November 1st to be entered into the drawing! We are calling it \"Pearls of Wisdom @ your library.\" Share your Pearls of Wisdom with other library professionals! For more information and to see the most recent \"Pearls of Wisdom @ your library\" go to the 3M website.
\"

Abstract: This report examines how N2H2\'s censorware deals with
archives of large amount of information. Three features are examined
from the Google search engine (Cache, Groups, Images). N2H2/BESS is
found to ban the cached pages everywhere, pass porn in groups, and
consider all image searching to be pornography. The general problems
of censorware versus large archives are discussed (i.e., why
censorware is impelled to situations such as banning the Google cache).
\"

ALICIA CALDWELL of the St. Petersburg Times writes:\"In what is the largest national survey of computer use, the U.S. Commerce Department today released statistics that show African-American and Hispanic children are far less likely to have a computer at home than white children. Consequently, computer access at schools and public libraries is particularly important to these youngsters as computers increasingly become life tools in the 21st century.\"
The story goes on to describe what libraries and schools in Tampa Bay are doing to provide access.
Full Story

Kevin Kipp from the St. Louis Commerce Magazine writes about the state of academic libraries in Missouri and how technology has improved services.
\"The world of libraries has changed because of technology,” says Karen Luebbert, vice president and executive assistant to the president at Webster University. “The key now is access rather than possession.\"
There is also a synopsis of Missouri\'s academic libraries showing volumes, budget and technology. Full Story

Award-winning children\'s book author and National Children\'s Book and Literacy Alliance founder Mary Brigid Barrett will make the case for improving school libraries this Saturday at the National Book Festival in Washington:

Libraries and librarians are in the forefront of literacy outreach, Barrett says. While organizations that give children books are providing a valuable service, they can never replace libraries. \'\'Giving a child one or two books is like giving him one free breakfast when he\'s starving,\'\' she said. School libraries are particularly needed today, because most children cannot walk to their public libraries. Libraries in urban areas may present a safety threat, and in rural areas, the distances are often too great.

Barrett says that her work with senators Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican, on legislation to increase funding for school libraries has revealed some disturbing information . . .

Bookmobiles are still going strong in PA. Currently there is at least one bookmobile in 25 Pennsylvania counties. The program began in 1977 with a single bookmobile. The bookmobiles are especially popular in rural areas without a local library. From the Tribune-Review

Mark writes \"Adam Druckman, Detroit Metro Times: The personal home page was the Web\'s first rallying call for mass social change. \"On the Internet,\" the pundits claimed, \"everyone will be a publisher!\" What happened?Full Story fromAlternet.org\"

The authors says the old style \"look at me\" homepages have changed, now the big thing is Blogging (e.g.).

\"I miss the personal home pages of yore. Their clunky charm was the prototype for the Web\'s emerging power to communicate. And now that so many of them are gone (or turned into Web logs), I wish somebody had saved the original models, if only for history\'s sake.\"

Cliff Urr writes \"Diane Rehm talks with James Billington, Librarian of Congress since 1987, about the upoming National Book Festival, hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, and about the resources and mission of the world\'s largest library.

British citizen Melvin Nelson Perry, 45, was given an 18-month prison sentence on Tuesday for stealing six valuable maps from the map collection of Finnish explorer A. E. Nordenskiöld from the library of the University of Helsinki in February this year. In spite of his prison sentence, Perry walked out of Helsinki District Court a free man, as he was not immediately ordered into custody. It is unlikely that he will ever have to serve his time unless he decides to come to Finland voluntarily.

Perry has not yet decided if he plans to appeal his sentence. He said that he would be willing to do community service, \"but not in a public library\", he added.

What looks to be a very interesting article on the corrosive effects of emerging intellectual property laws on intellectual freedom:

One of the more confusing paradoxes of the Internet Era is that even as more information is becoming readily available than ever before, various commercial forces are converging to make information more scarce, or at least more expensive and amenable to strict market control. More than an oddity, this paradox may be an augury about the fate of the free information ecology that has long distinguished our democratic culture . . .

I AM writing on behalf of the detainees (prisoners) in the Papua New Guinea Correctional Institutions who are earnestly seeking the assistance of the citizens of this country and overseas for library books. All the jails in the country have their own mini libraries but only a few books. Others only have the Jack and the Beanstalk novels and nothing else. We therefore need more books and other literature to restock the detainees’ libraries around the country.So, if you have any books that you want to “throw away”, please I urge you to donate them to:

That\'s about all there is to it folks: just a short notation in Nick Denton\'s weblog entry for August 27th. Some pretty high praise from the founder of Moreover Technologies which takes online current awareness to a new level. The entry in the \'blog is to Peter Scott\'s list of library weblogs.